Finding Jesus's Empty Tomb

[tosca1]

double post

 

[tosca1]

Originally Posted by distraff View Post
Let me make this clear for everyone. This thread is not about the truth of Christianity.

Of course, it is.

But, perhaps, you wouldn't know that.

 

[FluffyNinja]

There is a difference. We probably don't accept any supernatural claims surrounding that battle. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For example if I said I found a cat in my yard today, you would probably just take my word for it unless you knew I was a dishonest person. Now if I claimed that I found tiny elves in my yard, you would ask for evidence.

I don't use the term "supernatural". That is your choice. I am a follower of Christ. As such, the incidents surrounding the empty tomb are quite "natural" to me. As an earlier poster suggested, it did not take long for your true colors to be revealed. You're not really interested in discussion from a religious position nor from a position of faith at all. You're simply out to discredit a Christian's faith in God's Word with a sly attempt to disguise it as the desire to have a "meaningful" discussion of the gospels. But in reality, you've done nothing more than apply some double-standard for evidentiary requirements as so many Bible detractors tend to do. Nothing new here. Sadly, "Narrow is the gate and difficult the path that leads to life (and light) and very FEW will find it."

 

[FluffyNinja]

There is a difference. We probably don't accept any supernatural claims surrounding that battle. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For example if I said I found a cat in my yard today, you would probably just take my word for it unless you knew I was a dishonest person. Now if I claimed that I found tiny elves in my yard, you would ask for evidence.

And by the way, if three other credible witnesses also reported seeing tiny elves in your yard as well and wrote separate, yet strikingly similar accounts of it.....I'd be forced to ascribe a degree of credibility to the story, regardless of some inconsistencies in minute details.
The fact that THERE ARE some minor inconsistencies should suggest (to any credible historian) that the witnesses/authors likely did not collaborate when writing their accounts. :shrug:

 

[ludin]

And by the way, if three other credible witnesses also reported seeing tiny elves in your yard as well and wrote separate, yet strikingly similar accounts of it.....I'd be forced to ascribe a degree of credibility to the story, regardless of some inconsistencies in minute details.
The fact that THERE ARE some minor inconsistencies should suggest (to any credible historian) that the witnesses/authors likely did not collaborate when writing their accounts. :shrug:

2 of the Gospel writers were known disciples. Matthew and John.
Luke was an apostle of Paul who knew the disciples and being Luke he probably spoke with Mary and other people.
which is why Most people default to luke as he is the most factual and detailed of the 4.
Mark was a disciple of Peter so he knew the disciples as well.

So we have matthew that establishes Christ on Josephs side.
We have Mark that tells a similar story but from a different point of view. still with evidence coming from 1st hand sources.
Luke is the same way but goes a bit further and establishes Christ's lineage on Mary's side which is significant.
Then we have John which establishes exactly who Christ is and was.

 

[RAMOSS]

the consistent account is already there. there is no reason to continue to rehash the issue over again.
if you don't believe it then that if your choice to do so.

I don't have to do something that has already been done. that is what I am trying to tell you, but you don't care about that.
this is another one of those I gottcha you can't prove it threads.

you don't tell me what to do. if you don't like people telling you what already exists to your question and are unwilling to accept that
why do you continue pressing until someone tells you want to hear which is the real issue.

If the consistent account is there, why do so many people disagree what that consistent account says?

 

[RAMOSS]

2 of the Gospel writers were known disciples. Matthew and John.
Luke was an apostle of Paul who knew the disciples and being Luke he probably spoke with Mary and other people.
which is why Most people default to luke as he is the most factual and detailed of the 4.
Mark was a disciple of Peter so he knew the disciples as well.

So we have matthew that establishes Christ on Josephs side.
We have Mark that tells a similar story but from a different point of view. still with evidence coming from 1st hand sources.
Luke is the same way but goes a bit further and establishes Christ's lineage on Mary's side which is significant.
Then we have John which establishes exactly who Christ is and was.

Please show that the disciple Matthew actually wrote the Gospel of Matthew. Most biblical scholars disagree. Please show that the disciple John wrote John. Most biblical scholars disagree.

From Gospel of John

Robert Kysar writes the following on the authorship of the Gospel of John (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 3, pp. 919-920):

The supposition that the author was one and the same with the beloved disciple is often advanced as a means of insuring that the evangelist did witness Jesus' ministry. Two other passages are advanced as evidence of the same - 19:35 and 21:24. But both falter under close scrutiny. 19:35 does not claim that the author was the one who witnessed the scene but only that the scene is related on the sound basis of eyewitness. 21:24 is part of the appendix of the gospel and should not be assumed to have come from the same hand as that responsible for the body of the gospel. Neither of these passages, therefore, persuades many Johannine scholars that the author claims eyewitness status.

There is a case to be made that John, the son of Zebedee, had already died long before the Gospel of John came to be written. It is worth noting for its own sake, even though the "beloved disciple" need not be identified with John, the son of Zebedee. In his ninth century Chronicle in the codex Coislinianus, George Hartolos says, "[John] was worth of martyrdom." Hamartolos proceeds to quote Papias to the effect that, "he [John] was killed by the Jews." In the de Boor fragment of an epitome of the fifth century Chronicle of Philip of Side, the author quotes Papias: Papias in the second book says that John the divine and James his brother were killed by Jews. Morton Enslin observes (Christian Beginnings, pp. 369-370): "That PapiasÂ’ source of information is simply an inference from Mark 10:35-40 or its parallel, Matt. 20:20-23, is possible. None the less, this Marcan passage itself affords solid ground. No reasonable interpretation of these words can deny the high probability that by the time these words were written [ca. 70 CE] both brothers had 'drunk the cup' that Jesus had drunk and had been 'baptized with the baptism' with which he had been baptized." Since the patristic tradition is unanimous in identifying the beloved disciple with John, at least this evidence discredits the patristic tradition concerning the authorship of the Gospel of John.

If the author of the Gospel of John were an eyewitness, presumably the author would have known that Jesus and his compatriots were permitted to enter the synagogues. But at one several points it is stated that those who acknowledged Jesus as the Christ during the life of Jesus were put out of the synagogue. This anachronism is inconceivable as the product of an eyewitness.

Continued:

 

[RAMOSS]

and from Gospel of Matthew

t is the near-universal position of scholarship that the Gospel of Matthew is dependent upon the Gospel of Mark. This position is accepted whether one subscribes to the dominant Two-Source Hypothesis or instead prefers the Farrer-Goulder hypothesis.

It is also the consensus position that the evangelist was not the apostle Matthew. Such an idea is based on the second century statements of Papias and Irenaeus. As quoted by Eusebius in Hist. Eccl. 3.39, Papias states: "Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could." In Adv. Haer. 3.1.1, Irenaeus says: "Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the church." We know that Irenaeus had read Papias, and it is most likely that Irenaeus was guided by the statement he found there. That statement in Papias itself is considered to be unfounded because the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek and relied largely upon Mark, not the author's first-hand experience.

Herman N. Ridderbos writes (Matthew, p. 7):

This means, however, that we can no longer accept the traditional view of Matthew's authorship. At least two things forbid us to do so. First, the tradition maintains that Matthew authored an Aramaic writing, while the standpoint I have adopted does not allow us to regard our Greek text as a translation of an Aramaic original. Second, it is extremely doubtful that an eyewitness like the apostle Matthew would have made such extensive use of material as a comparison of the two Gospels indicates. Mark, after all, did not even belong to the circle of the apostles. Indeed Matthew's Gospel surpasses those of the other synoptic writers neither in vividness of presentation nor in detail, as we would expect in an eyewitness report, yet neither Mark nor Luke had been among those who had followed Jesus from the beginning of His public ministry.

J. C. Fenton argues (The Gospel of Saint Matthew, p. 12):

It is usually thought that Mark's Gospel was written about A.D. 65 and that the author of it was neither one of the apostles nor an eyewitness of the majority of the events recorded in his Gospel. Matthew was therefore dependent on the writing of such a man for the production of his book. What Matthew has done, in fact, is to produce a second and enlarged edition of Mark. Moreover, the changes which he makes in Mark's way of telling the story are not those corrections which an eyewitness might make in the account of one who was not an eyewitness. Thus, whereas in Mark's Gospel we may be only one remove from eyewitnesses, in Matthew's Gospel we are at one remove further still.

Francis Write Beare notes (The Gospel according to Matthew, p. 7):

But the dependence of the book upon documentary sources is so great as to forbid us to look upon it as the work of any immediate disciple of Jesus. Apart from that, there are clear indications that it is a product of the second or third Christian generation. The traditional name of Matthew is retained in modern discussion only for convenience.

 

[Goshin]

Of course, we have to talk about the guard!



Behind the story as Matthew tells it seems to lie a tradition history of Jewish and Christian polemic, a developing pattern of assertion and counter-assertion:{2}

Christian: 'The Lord is risen!'
Jew: 'No, his disciples stole away his body.'
Christian: 'The guard at the tomb would have prevented any such theft.'
Jew: 'No, his disciples stole away his body while the guard slept.'
Christian: 'The chief priests bribed the guard to say this.'


Though Matthew alone of the four evangelists mentions the guard at the tomb (John mentions a guard in connection with Jesus' arrest; cf. Mk. 14. 44), the gospel of Peter also relates the story of the guard at the tomb, and its account may well be independent of Matthew, since the verbal similarities are practically nil.{3}


But perhaps the strongest consideration in favor of the historicity of the guard is the history of polemic presupposed in this story. The Jewish slander that the disciples stole the body was probably the reaction to the Christian proclamation that Jesus was risen.{14} This Jewish allegation is also mentioned in Justin Dialogue with Trypho 108.



But if this is a probable reconstruction of the history of the polemic, then it is very difficult to believe the guard is unhistorical.{15} In the first place it is unlikely that the Christians would invent a fiction like the guard, which everyone, especially their Jewish opponents, would realize never existed. Lies are the most feeble sort of apologetic there could be. Since the Jewish/ Christian controversy no doubt originated in Jerusalem, then it is hard to understand how Christians could have tried to refute their opponents' charge with a falsification which would have been plainly untrue, since there were no guards about who claimed to have been stationed at the tomb. But secondly, it is even more improbable that confronted with this palpable lie, the Jews would, instead of exposing and denouncing it as such, proceed to create another lie, even stupider, that the guard had fallen asleep while the disciples broke into the tomb and absconded with the body. If the existence of the guard were false, then the Jewish polemic would never have taken the course that it did. Rather the controversy would have stopped right there with the renunciation that any such guard had ever been set by the Jews. It would never have come to the point that the Christians had to invent a third lie, that the Jews had bribed the fictional guard. So although there are reasons to doubt the existence of the guard at the tomb, there are also weighty considerations in its favor. It seems best to leave it an open question. Ironically, the value of Matthew's story for the evidence for the resurrection has nothing to do with the guard at all or with his intention of refuting the allegation that the disciples had stolen the body. The conspiracy theory has been universally rejected on moral and psychological grounds, so that the guard story as such is really quite superfluous. Guard or no guard, no critic today believes that the disciples could have robbed the tomb and faked the resurrection. Rather the real value of Matthew's story is the incidental -- and for that reason all the more reliable -- information that Jewish polemic never denied that the tomb was empty, but instead tried to explain it away.
Thus the early opponents of the Christians themselves bear witness to the fact of the empty tomb.{16}


The Guard at the Tomb

Excellent points, kudos.


If no one else has said it already, I could add this: Many of those who were witness to the Resurrection eventually suffered martyrdom, and often a painful end... and very few indeed are those who will willingly die an unpleasant death for the sake of something they know to be a lie. The refusal of nearly all to recant is evidence they believed what they proclaimed.

 

[ludin]

If the consistent account is there, why do so many people disagree what that consistent account says?

they don't.

 

[ludin]

Please show that the disciple Matthew actually wrote the Gospel of Matthew. Most biblical scholars disagree. Please show that the disciple John wrote John. Most biblical scholars disagree.

It has been set that way for ol the past 2000 years from people that had first hand experience and were closest to the source of the writing.
even today theologians confirm the authorship of the gospels.

Gospel of John Commentary: Who Wrote the Gospel of John and How Historical Is It? - Biblical Archaeology Society

noted theologians throughout the ages maintain that it was indeed the disciple John who penned the famous Biblical book.

 

[RAMOSS]

It has been set that way for ol the past 2000 years from people that had first hand experience and were closest to the source of the writing.
even today theologians confirm the authorship of the gospels.

Gospel of John Commentary: Who Wrote the Gospel of John and How Historical Is It? - Biblical Archaeology Society

noted theologians throughout the ages maintain that it was indeed the disciple John who penned the famous Biblical book.

Yet, which john?? There are reasons to say it is not the disciple john

From Gospel of John

Robert Kysar writes the following on the authorship of the Gospel of John (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 3, pp. 919-920):

The supposition that the author was one and the same with the beloved disciple is often advanced as a means of insuring that the evangelist did witness Jesus' ministry. Two other passages are advanced as evidence of the same - 19:35 and 21:24. But both falter under close scrutiny. 19:35 does not claim that the author was the one who witnessed the scene but only that the scene is related on the sound basis of eyewitness. 21:24 is part of the appendix of the gospel and should not be assumed to have come from the same hand as that responsible for the body of the gospel. Neither of these passages, therefore, persuades many Johannine scholars that the author claims eyewitness status.

There is a case to be made that John, the son of Zebedee, had already died long before the Gospel of John came to be written. It is worth noting for its own sake, even though the "beloved disciple" need not be identified with John, the son of Zebedee. In his ninth century Chronicle in the codex Coislinianus, George Hartolos says, "[John] was worth of martyrdom." Hamartolos proceeds to quote Papias to the effect that, "he [John] was killed by the Jews." In the de Boor fragment of an epitome of the fifth century Chronicle of Philip of Side, the author quotes Papias: Papias in the second book says that John the divine and James his brother were killed by Jews. Morton Enslin observes (Christian Beginnings, pp. 369-370): "That PapiasÂ’ source of information is simply an inference from Mark 10:35-40 or its parallel, Matt. 20:20-23, is possible. None the less, this Marcan passage itself affords solid ground. No reasonable interpretation of these words can deny the high probability that by the time these words were written [ca. 70 CE] both brothers had 'drunk the cup' that Jesus had drunk and had been 'baptized with the baptism' with which he had been baptized." Since the patristic tradition is unanimous in identifying the beloved disciple with John, at least this evidence discredits the patristic tradition concerning the authorship of the Gospel of John.

If the author of the Gospel of John were an eyewitness, presumably the author would have known that Jesus and his compatriots were permitted to enter the synagogues. But at one several points it is stated that those who acknowledged Jesus as the Christ during the life of Jesus were put out of the synagogue. This anachronism is inconceivable as the product of an eyewitness.

THere is much more more..

 

[SmartCat]

I have often head the empty tomb used as evidence that Jesus is God. This is based on multiple accounts of the experience of multiple eye witnesses in the four gospels. So I would like to hear a consistent account from someone on this forum of what exactly happened with the finding of the empty tomb by the women close to Jesus and the apostles. That is what I really want to hear, a consistent account from all four gospels.

This debate is only about the consistency of the four gospels that is it. So lets try to make an honest effort to tell a story of the finding of the empty tomb from all four gospels that does not contradict any of the four and brings their accounts together. I am asking for someone to do so because I tried and failed to do this. I looked online and could not find anyone who had done this to my satisfaction.

To make this easy, here are the chapters that talk about the finding of the empty tomb:
Matthew 28
Mark 16
Luke 24
John 20

I hope to have an interesting conversation!

Years ago I read a book about the life of Jesus that I wish I remembered the title of. It said that the different accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb resembled different eye witnesses to an automobile accident. The details differ, but the central account is the same.

With accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus the dating matters. The Jewish Uprising that happened between 66 and 73 AD killed eye witnesses and destroyed written accounts. The scholarly consensus is that the Gospel of St. Mark was written about 70 AD, and the other gospels were written later. This leaves a lot of time for misconceptions to have slipped into the account.

During the ministry of Jesus most of his followers expected him to announce that he was the Messiah foretold by passages in the Old Testament. Many probably expected Jesus to lead a sucessful revolt against Rome and re establish the dynasty of David. For these the Crucifixion was inexplicable and shocking.

The belief that Jesus had risen from the dead may have begun like rumors about sightings of Elvis. People would think they saw Jesus from a distance, perhaps in a crowd. They would tell their friends. The stories would spread. Decades later someone would compose a scene in which close friends of Jesus would have gone to the tomb three days after the Crucifixion, and find the tomb empty.

However, it is likely that someone composing such a scene would have chosen men to have found the tomb empty. At the time women were not allowed to give testimonies in trials.

I think it is likely that Mark, Luke, and Acts at least were written before the Jewish Uprising.

The scholarly consensus is that 1 Corinthians was written by St. Paul before the Jewish Uprising. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul writes, "3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also."

So what did happen? I don't know. I was not there.

 

[Logicman]

and from Gospel of Matthew

t is the near-universal position of scholarship that the Gospel of Matthew is dependent upon the Gospel of Mark.

Horse manure. There's no need to copy Mark.

 

[Logicman]

From your article: If the author of the Gospel of John were an eyewitness, presumably the author would have known that Jesus and his compatriots were permitted to enter the synagogues. But at one several points it is stated that those who acknowledged Jesus as the Christ during the life of Jesus were put out of the synagogue. This anachronism is inconceivable as the product of an eyewitness.

The Jewish leaders didn't like Jesus or his disciples, so they didn't want them in their synagogue. That's reason enough to cast your point into the garbage heap. Duh.

 

[RAMOSS]

Horse manure. There's no need to copy Mark.

Yet, that is where the evidence leads to... from you know, actually reading the Gospels and understanding them.

 

[RAMOSS]

The Jewish leaders didn't like Jesus or his disciples, so they didn't want them in their synagogue. That's reason enough to cast your point into the garbage heap. Duh.

Yet, what you have not been able to do for backing up your claim is show any non-christian source, or any Jewish source from before the late second century that this is so. You can make all the declarations you want, but without being able to back it up with reasonable source, it is meaningless.

 

[SmartCat]

Yet, which john?? There are reasons to say it is not the disciple john

From Gospel of John

If the author of the Gospel of John were an eyewitness, presumably the author would have known that Jesus and his compatriots were permitted to enter the synagogues. But at one several points it is stated that those who acknowledged Jesus as the Christ during the life of Jesus were put out of the synagogue. This anachronism is inconceivable as the product of an eyewitness.

The gospels of Matthew and John were probably written by men who were not eye witnesses, but who had source material that was written by St. Matthew and St. John.

 

[RAMOSS]

The gospels of Matthew and John were probably written by men who were not eye witnesses, but who had source material that was written by St. Matthew and St. John.

The Gospel of john, at least to me, seems to be an entirely different line of stories.. When it comes to mathew /luke/Mark, most htink Mark came first.. and Matthew and Luke copied from them. It's quite the jigsaw puzzle, and anybody who says the definitely know is probably wrong. There are missing pieces to the puzzle, and I personally think that it is unlikely that those pieces will be filled in. Weirder things have happened though.

 

[SmartCat]

The Gospel of john, at least to me, seems to be an entirely different line of stories.. When it comes to mathew /luke/Mark, most htink Mark came first.. and Matthew and Luke copied from them. It's quite the jigsaw puzzle, and anybody who says the definitely know is probably wrong. There are missing pieces to the puzzle, and I personally think that it is unlikely that those pieces will be filled in. Weirder things have happened though.

Even during ancient times, similarities between Mathew, Mark, and Luke were noticed. These are called "the synoptic gospels." The Gospel of St. John's differs in important respect from the first three. For example, it gives Jesus a ministry of three years, rather than two. With John Jesus' cleansing of the Temple happens during the beginning of his ministry, rather than during the end.

 

[Logicman]

Yet, what you have not been able to do for backing up your claim is show any non-christian source, or any Jewish source from before the late second century that this is so. You can make all the declarations you want, but without being able to back it up with reasonable source, it is meaningless.

Yawn. As a dedicated Christ-denier, your half-baked arguments just aren't making it.

 

[Logicman]

When it comes to mathew /luke/Mark, most htink Mark came first.. and Matthew and Luke copied from them.

You've got zero actual evidence for that claim, and it doesn't help your cause that Matthew and Luke have a lot of passages that are not in Mark. So give that nonsense claim of yours a rest.

 

[SmartCat]

When it comes to mathew /luke/Mark, most htink Mark came first.. and Matthew and Luke copied from them.

You've got zero actual evidence for that claim, and it doesn't help your cause that Matthew and Luke have a lot of passages that are not in Mark. So give that nonsense claim of yours a rest.

Passages that Matthew and Luke share that are not found in Mark are commonly attributed to a primitive gospel that is called "Q" for "Quelle," which is "source" in German.

 

[jet57]

they aren't a single account. there is a single event.
they were written by different people from different points of view.
yet the story is still pretty consistent.

why should I have to tell you something that is already written that you can read for yourself.

The most enlighten thing here is it seems that none of Biblical enthusiasts can seem to answer the question. I too would be very interested in a cohesive, easy to understand report that ties the "viewpoints together" in way that tells one story of the resurrection: one witness may say that the tomb was 6x6, one may say it was 10x8, one may say that the sun was in his eyes, all those differing accounts notwithstanding, there has to be a scholarly interpretation ties ties all together that says, 1+1+2+1+4 = 9. Every account should equal 9. They apparently do not and that is the conundrum of the OP and the question that I ask.

We're trying to get a full picture. Can any of you assist in that?

 

[Visbek]

The point of this debate is to come up with a consistent account of the empty tomb. If you are unable to do so, don't pretend like you think it is so easy to do it is not worth demonstrating. If you do not want to engage in what this thread is about then why don't you find yourself another thread?

No one can produce a truly consistent account, drawn from the four documents. That's just an exercise in mental gymnastics.

That said, I don't think you would achieve such precise consistency from any events from that point in time. Too much information was captured and disseminated in oral traditions; too many texts are lost; historians will naturally emphasize different elements of a single event. E.g. Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius overlap in their discussions of the early Roman emperors, and their writings aren't 100% consistent.

Today, textual consistency -- especially exact repetitions of phrases and events -- is typically taken less as a sign of proof, and more an indication of a common source. E.g. many scholars hypothesize that at a minimum, Matthew and Luke were based in part off of Mark; some scholars posit the existence of a second lost document ("Q") that provided material used in Matthew, Luke and the Gospel of Thomas.